Conundrum (29 page)

I doubted I’d be back
home
soon, so threw a couple
of
flakes of hay out into the pasture and filled the dogs’ bowls with food. I startled Buster and Angel when I opened the door on my way out. They lifted sleepy heads long enough to assess I was leaving and that a walk would not be in their upcoming agenda.
A couple of tail thumps later they were back asleep.

I drove much slower this time to the hospital. I kept thinking I needed to call someone,
other
people, and tell them what happened. I did leave a message with one of the employees at the feed store, instructing Daniel to cover things for a few days. But whenever serious things
had
cropped up in the past, my first impulse was to reach my mother, and then my brothers. We had always kept a tight network of communication,
and now I
was
set adrift, directionless.
I realized that apart from Anne I didn’t have any other close friends I confided in and leaned on. My family for all these years had been that strong tower, my rock and my refuge for any emergency. Without that support, I
was
like a chair wobbling on three legs.

I turned on the radio and heard Genesis singing “Invisible Touch.” Wanting to drown out my inner dialogue, which consisted of nine parts guilt to one part self-deprecation, I turned up the volume.
The lyrics screamed out at me with a personal message.
“
She seems to have an invisible touch
.
 
.
 
.
she reaches in and grabs right hold of your heart
.
 
.
 
.
”
I thought of the recent meltdown at Chernobyl, and how a radioactive core
could overheat and explode. The images on TV
had been
shocking—an entire building gone, devastation for miles around. But the worst part of it was the radioactive particles that carried on the air, contaminating and killing over a stretch of miles and
, inevitably,
years. The explosion may have taken only moments, but the repercussions were
exponential
. I remember the announcer saying the fallout was four hundred times greater than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and that light radioactive
rain fell as far away as Ireland.

The chorus of the song blared at me
, stabbing my gut with its pertinent observation:
“
She seems to have an invisible touch
.
 
.
 
.
S
he
takes control and slowly tears you apart
.
 
.
 
.
”

I pushed away
the macabre image of people’s skin melting off their bodies,
then
wondered just how far and wide the fallout from my mother’s actions would carry. Would my brothers ever speak to me again? Would I be allowed to see my nieces and nephew, watch them grow up? Like nuclear contamination, I envisioned the soil of our lives poisoned so thoroughly that the idea something healthy could someday grow again seemed
fatuous
.
The far-flung effects of her rage were only beginning to manifest—of that I was sure.
Would there be any safe haven for us? I didn’t allow myself to think that Jeremy would walk away from me
—
not now, not at this crisis
—
but I made myself face that possibility. I prayed it wouldn’t happen. W
e
needed to cling to each other for safety and support. Or else we’d fall.

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

I wiped the tears from my cheeks as I parked and headed into the hospital. Out of habit, I made for the stairwell, having learned Jeremy was now on the second floor.
I checked the room numbers as I headed down the hallway, reminiscent of my recent jaunt down a different hospital corridor only weeks ago—visiting Raff at Hillcrest. The two experiences overlapped and merged in my mind as I added the image of my mother traversing a similar hospital hallway twenty-five years ago to sit by my father’s bedside.

Had she
done
that—kept vigil over him as he took his last breath
s
? Would he have wanted her there? Would she have cried, seeing him wasted and emaciated, her handsome husband ravage
d
by cancer?
I couldn’t answer those questions, not anymore.
I wondered if Ed Hutchinson had visited my father in the hospital, which got me wondering about Julie’s insistent phone message.
At some point I had to call her, although her urgencies
surely
paled in comparison to mine. But I couldn’t help wondering what else she had to say, what startling revelation she would
present to me
.

Jeremy was propped up in his bed with fewer accoutrements attached to his various body parts
than
before. A blush of color had returned to his face, and that set my heart at ease
.
H
is eyes were closed
. Sunlight shone through the cracks in the blinds and spilled onto the floor
like proverbial rays of hope
. I studied a plastic tube that came out from under the sheet and fed into a machine.

“They cut
a
hole in my side and crammed that thing into my lung.”

Jeremy’s voice startled me with its lucidity. I turned and he grimaced.

“Are you in a lot of pain? Can I do something to help?”

He shifted slightly and gritted his teeth. “You don’t want to know how much I hurt.” He patted the bed next to his leg. “Sit.”

I carefully positioned myself next to him and put my hand on his. I
hesitated
to touch any part of his body, unsure where all the injuries were. I clamped down on the ache starting in my heart, for as much as Jeremy’s face displayed remorse over what he’d done, guilt berated me in spades.
I had driven him to this—by letting disaster strike our lives. I needed Jeremy to know I would
un
equivocally stand by him. I would do anything for him, move anywhere, make the appropriate sacrifices. If it meant leaving the state and all my animals behind, so be it.

I had rehearsed my speech of dedication in the car, but seeing him in such straits caused all my words to flee. I wanted nothing more than to bury my face in his chest and wrap my arms around him, but I knew it would be quite some time before I could
touch him again with such abandon—physically or emotionally
.

“Lisa
.
 
.
 
.
” Jeremy’s
strained
voice shook me from my reverie. I didn’t realize I had started crying again. “Everything will be okay
.
 
.
 
.
we’ll help each other.”

A fluttery sigh escaped my chest.
I needed to hear those words. The fear that Jeremy would send me away had
hung over my head like a sword of doom. I exhaled in relief, but that only amped up
my crying
. Jeremy’s fingers glide
d
across my cheeks, wiping tears away. When I looked at him, tears welled up in his eyes
too
.

“Oh
,
hon, I’m so sorry
for
what I’ve done to you
.
 
.
 
.
for so many things
.
 
.
 
.
but I love you so much, and I need you. You know that, don’t you?”
His words, whispers
like caressing fingers, like curling smoke, enwrapped me in that quiet room.

I nodded. Jeremy stared at the ceiling. “When I first woke and realized I was in the hospital
.
 
.
 
.
that I was hurt,
it hit me. All the arguing, the fights. She was trying to break us apart
.
 
.
 
.
divide and conquer. I could see it so clearly, how we fell for her ploy. But nothing
will
make me stop loving you, Lis. And I
k
now we will get through this. Maybe this is a good thing, a way to start over
.
 
.
 
.
”

I rested my hand on his cheek.
“
Look,
I don’t care about anything—the house, my animals, the truck. I just want you to get well and get back on your feet. Let’s just get that far for now, okay? We don’t need to
tackle anything else
.
”

I turned at the sound of footsteps. A nurse came in, with a brusque manner and efficiency written all over her face. “Time for your breathing tests.”

Jeremy grunted and his mood darkened. “They need to see if my lung has inflated to capacity. You should probably go. If they have to readjust that tube again, you don’t want to hear me scream. Last time, they had to peel me off the ceiling.”

“Oh,” I said, looking up. “
So
that
’s
why there are claw marks up there
.
”

A chuckle escaped his lips, followed by a frown. “Ouch, don’t make jokes. It hurts to laugh.”

“Okay.”
I gave his hand a squeeze and stood.
Another two nurses came in, maneuvering around me. I could tell from their expressions that it was time for me to leave. Relief coursed through my veins. Jeremy was in good hands; he’d recover and be
out
in a
week or so
.
There wasn’t much I could do for him until they released him to go home. Then we could talk and develop a game plan.

I gave him a kiss on his cheek
,
and he stroked my hair. His eyes were full of love and reassurance. Despite the weightiness of all we were going through, his gaze buoyed me like a cork floating over turbulent waves. It felt
as if
that treacherous storm had begun to pass through and the winds were abating.
Maybe not, and maybe a bigger storm was coming. But I had hope, and
knowing that Jeremy was determined to hold on
to me, we could survive. We might
get
spit out and shipwrecked on some foreign shore, but we would land intact
and together
.

My mother underestimated the power of love, I thought
,
as I walked out to my car. I realized, in a burst of clarity,
that was
her fatal error. Of all her weapons of manipulation and deceit, she couldn’t fathom what it would take to destroy something as simple and pure as love
, because it was the one “enemy” she didn’t understand. You can’t fight something you don’t understand.

For the first time in my life, I felt pity for the woman who had raised me.
I saw her lashing out at everyone around her because they all had something she couldn’t grasp, couldn’t take by force. She just didn’t get it.
Yet, w
hy was she this way? She wasn’t the parent who had spent years in foster homes, tossed around like trash, her self-esteem crushed.
Was her incapacity to love a genetic flaw?
She
’d
had two stable parents who raised her and sent her to college. My mother never spoke much about her parents, but her words were never unkind. She told us they had died in a car accident when I was ten years old. I grunted. Maybe they weren’t dead
at
all
—e
xcept in my mother’s imagination.
I pictured them sequestered and neglected in some smelly, depressing nursing home, wondering why their daughter never visited them.

As I stood on the sidewalk outside the hospital, the cool evening air wafting through my hair,
my mind locked on
to that day I found my mother crying.
Why did my mind gravitate to that moment in time? Something urgent tugged at me.
I
had
witnessed
anguish
in that solitary instance
of her vulnerability
,
as she
had
spout
ed
how I had ruined her life, chased away all the men in her life,
destroyed
her chances for love. No wonder she wanted to ruin mine. Fair’s fair
, right?

Another memory came unbidden. I was at Heidi’s house. Her mother taught me guitar—folk songs and pop tunes. I was in my Joni Mitchell phase, yearning to play like her
, and Bess gave me weekly lessons
. Heidi was a year younger than I, and she had an older brother who was in high school—a moody, creepy guy who, I now guessed,
must have
be
en
on drugs whenever I saw him. I couldn’t recall his name, but I remembered his glassy red-eyed stare and the way he looked at me—

I sucked in a breath
,
and a rush of recollection stormed my thoughts. I grasped at the bench nearby and lowered down to sit. How had I forgotten this episode during eighth grade?
Fear tingled every nerve,
as if I were
awakening after a long slumber.

I saw Heidi taking me aside. Where? Her bedroom, the kitchen? Her face was distraught; she looked terrified, but needed to tell me something. I listened in horror to the things pouring out of her mouth, filthy things her brother had been doing to her in the bathroom. How he’d lock the door and take off her clothes, zip down his pants.

I held my breath as her words replayed in my mind, along with all the scary pictures that formed as she detailed one torture after another, doled out by a sex-craved maniacal brother who used her brutally for his pleasure.

At fourteen, I
’d
had plenty of ideas about sex. But her confession
blasted
apart my safe and alluring concepts of intimacy. I had no idea a man could do such things to a girl
, would dare force such things upon her. I cringed
as
I replayed those images in my mind.
Heidi had been too afraid to tell her mother, so
in the middle
of my guitar lesson,
unable to barricade the agonizing images,
I
blurted out
to
Bess the things Heidi had confided in me. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember if I told her mother on my own
initiative
or if Heidi had asked me to
intercede
. But Bess’s face went pale as I spoke
—that much I recall—
and
yet, she
calmly told me she’d look into the matter, and then continued on with our lesson.

How in the world had she sat there, listening to the disgusting details I poured out to her? Did she doubt me? Had Heidi often lied to her mother, or
showed
a tendency to exaggerate
?
Maybe she was mad at her brother, and decided this was a way to get revenge—making up all that stuff. At the time, I didn’t consider she could have been lying; her fear and distress seemed so real. But as I sat on that bench
in front of the hospital
, I wondered,
having recently learned
the hard lesson
that truth
wa
s
often
a matter of interpretation
.

It was shortly afte
r that guitar lesson that I had pushed open my mother’s bedroom door and found Elliott Blass naked by the window
—
exposed to me
—
and
caught
my mother’s
distressed
face, not unlike Heidi’s had been at the telling of her story.
No wonder my reaction
had been
amplified and caustic.

My jaw dropped, remembering. Pieces
joined
together, missing pieces I had long misplaced. One memory triggered another, and another, and I found myself confronting my mother in the kitchen later that
morning
, long after Elliott had dressed in a rush and hurried out.

My mother,
preparing sandwiches for lunch
. Me, standing there, confusing emotions railing at me, images tumbling, so frightful, I needed to exorcize them from my brain.
All the minute features of that kitchen—the orange-and-brown-square design
of
the linoleum floor, the varnished scalloped-edged
pine
cabinets, the pale
-
yellow tile countertops—they came to me in vivid color and
immediacy
.

My mouth opened and I spoke. Words tumbled out, accusing words that stabbed out of fear and misunderstanding. It hadn’t been my intent to ruin my mother’s chances at love.
My
sentences
were barraged by those terrible pictures of sex, of
that dark side of intimacy I had been exposed to at Heidi’s house. I heard Heidi’s brother threaten me in a growling voice, the following week at my guitar lesson
, while waiting for my mom to pick me up
. He had me pinned against the side of the house,
out of sight of the driveway,
angry eyes piercing mine, out of earshot from anyone who could help me.
“
You’re asking for it. And you’re going to get it.
You’ll pay for what you did
.
”
I squeezed my eyes shut,
willing him to leave me alone, but knowing he would never stop hunting me. Not until he did to me what he did to his sister.